BOSTON - Lawmakers and advocates are pushing to raise taxes on smokeless tobacco, loose tobacco and small cigars, saying it could net between $10 million and $13 million annually for the state.

Members of the prevention advocacy group Tobacco Free Mass, plus two state lawmakers, held a news conference Wednesday launching an effort to bring the tax on these tobacco products to the same level as cigarette taxes.

Officials say because the tax on other products wasn't raised when the state cigarette tax increased by $1 to $2.51 in July, more teenagers - sensitive to the price - are switching to other tobacco options.

Advocates believe raising the tax will prevent a teen market for chewing tobacco or flavored small cigars, with revenue going toward public health programs.

"What we hope will happen is that kids won't try tobacco in the first place because it's cost-prohibitive," said Russet Breslau, executive director of Tobacco Free Mass. "From a public health perspective, you'll see fewer kids smoking, and in the long run health care costs are being saved."

A report by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration showed a full percentage point increase - 3.4 to 4.4 percent - in the rate of smokeless tobacco use among boys aged 12 to 17 from 2002 to 2007.

State law currently taxes smokeless tobacco at 90 percent of the wholesale price and small cigars and loose tobacco at 30 percent. A bill filed by Rep. Jonathan Hecht, D-Watertown, would raise that percentage to 80 percent for small cigars and 90 percent for loose tobacco.

Lawmakers are working to find an appropriate increase for smokeless tobacco to match the levy on cigarettes, which at its current dollar amount is about 110 percent of the wholesale price.

"The principal goal is to equalize the tax so we're not creating the wrong incentives," Hecht said.

But Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Altria, which owns US Smokeless Tobacco and Philip Morris USA, said tobacco products are already heavily taxed and states should make better use of billions of dollars from tobacco settlements for prevention programs.

"If the goal is to prevent using tobacco products or having access, there are other ways to do that without the unintended consequences of a tax," Phelps said.

Still, Jeffrey Plaut, a partner at the New York-based Global Strategy Group, found in a Tobacco Free Mass-funded poll of 500 likely Massachusetts voters that 81 percent support raising the tax. The support is equal across demographics, Plaut said, with 73 percent of Republican voters saying they'd back an increase.

"It's not viewed as a partisan or taxing measure," Plaut said. "It's viewed as a public health measure."